Kickstarter: What Games Have You Backed and Why?

July 26th, 2013, 18:39

Best Kickstarter results for me so far have been FTL and Conquistadors……everything else has fallen short, and has made me take a second look at the KS model. Game-wise I mean, an still lots to come out that could further alter my thoughts.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Best Kickstarter results for me so far have been FTL and Conquistadors……everything else has fallen short, and has made me take a second look at the KS model. Game-wise I mean, an still lots to come out that could further alter my thoughts.

-Carn

Only 2 of the games I've KSed have been released so far, and I don't have any major complaints about either (Conquistador and Shadowrun returns). So far I'm 2 for 2 on my kickstarted games.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
I'm waiting for a single Kickstarter game to live up to its potential - before I feel I can truly trust the model. I'm sceptical, because I think there are several pitfalls that might be hard to avoid.

Unfortunately, so far, I seem to be right - though very few of the interesting ones have come out. But they've all seemed to be quite underwhelming and very limited in scope - with the recent Shadowrun being a prime example.

I don't think Kickstarter by itself raises enough funds to do this. SR:R cost $1.8 m (which remember, doesn't actually mean $1.8 m in game assets due to Amazon/Kickstarter cuts, taxes, overhead, licenses, and salaries) plus an unknown figure from loans. When you look at what they made with limited resources I think they did a good job. But, it doesn't stack up well against other games in the genre (which even old stuff like BG 2, probably had much larger budgets). For a game with BG 2 type scope I think we'd have to see either a huge Kickstarter, a $3-4m Kickstarter sequel where a lot of the tools & assets are already in place (probably in conjunction with some profits from previous game), or Kickstarter being used in conjunction with other financial backing.

Don't get me wrong, I hope Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, and ToN are the great RPGs with the scope we want, but I'm not going to hold my breath (I didn't include D: OS because I'm unsure how much of a game they had before the Kickstarter).

I only backed WL2, Torment and PE. I would have backed dead state but I missed the boat on that.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
My hope is that Kickstarter CRPGs will make a trend for ALL CRPGs.

Exactly what I hope as well. The snowball is also rapidly growing the more it rolls downhill. I hope they all do well financially, not just from the pledges but sales on steam etc so the next iterations can be bigger with more depth.

I've backed WL2, Torment, PE, and D:OS as they are party-based (more-or-less), single-player CRPGs with respectable budget and development teams. In all cases I only backed them once they allowed PayPal, which also meant they were successful. For the future, I would like to see something comparable with a non-horror space opera setting, such as a Traveller campaign. I'd also like to see a single-player Pathfinder game.

Originally Posted by greywolf00
I don't think Kickstarter by itself raises enough funds to do this. SR:R cost $1.8 m (which remember, doesn't actually mean $1.8 m in game assets due to Amazon/Kickstarter cuts, taxes, overhead, licenses, and salaries) plus an unknown figure from loans. When you look at what they made with limited resources I think they did a good job. But, it doesn't stack up well against other games in the genre (which even old stuff like BG 2, probably had much larger budgets). For a game with BG 2 type scope I think we'd have to see either a huge Kickstarter, a $3-4m Kickstarter sequel where a lot of the tools & assets are already in place (probably in conjunction with some profits from previous game), or Kickstarter being used in conjunction with other financial backing.

I don't think it's as much about money as you do.

I think it's about creative passion and design talent - and that's what I'm sceptical about.

You see, there's this "myth" that publishers have ruined the industry - and while I agree they're not good for creativity and art - I think it's a bit easy to blame the publishers exclusively.

The sad truth is that most developers just aren't that hungry or talented - and many of the KS projects are from people looking for a more comfortable development model, but they're not really that hungry anymore. They seem content to just reiterate the same kind of design as they used to - without really going further.

Don't get me wrong, I hope Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, and ToN are the great RPGs with the scope we want, but I'm not going to hold my breath (I didn't include D: OS because I'm unsure how much of a game they had before the Kickstarter).

I'll reserve judgment until those games are out. They all seem to be mostly about going back in time.

The one KS project that gives me real hope is Star Citizen. That looks to be a genuine attempt at evolving (and reviving) a genre. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for, and it doesn't have to be about that much money.

Definitely truth to that. For every great indie game out there, there's several bad ones. I'm really looking forward to AoD, the group at least appears to have a ton of passion for what they're doing and that always shows up in the final product. Interviews with BioWare indicate they have far more freedom to try new things under EA, I'm really just not a fan of most of what they've tried.

For me, evolution is kind of a toss up. I'm a big fan of "If it's not broke don't fix it" but there does have to be some small degree of forward progress/polishing. BG 2 is great, but I would expect a bit more in a remake (BG EE's additions weren't enough to justify the price to me for example). A lot of RPGs seem to be moving more towards adding Action elements (Kingdoms of Amalur, DA 2, Witcher) over the iso RTwP/TB RPGs of old and it's not an evolution I personally enjoy. I think this is publisher influence, more people interested in action, which makes it easier to recoup the investment & make profit. IMO, as the Mass Effect series went on you could see a heavier influence of action/shooting and it sometimes felt like the RPG side took a back seat. Most of the systems I enjoy are on KS instead of coming from publishers these days.

Star Citizen is also a prime example of a project with a ton of financial backing compared to the normal KS game. When coupled with their obvious passion for the project, I think feature creep will be far less of an issue for them than other projects. With so much more money to work with than something like SR:R, I'd expect scope/evolution to be bigger/more ambitious.

Originally Posted by greywolf00
Definitely truth to that. For every great indie game out there, there's several bad ones. I'm really looking forward to AoD, the group at least appears to have a ton of passion for what they're doing and that always shows up in the final product. Interviews with BioWare indicate they have far more freedom to try new things under EA, I'm really just not a fan of most of what they've tried.

AoD seems to be doing some cool things in terms of mechanics - but the setting and atmosphere both seem quite dreary to me. I'm big into those things - so I might not even play it.

Bioware appear to have lost all their passion long ago, or they're passionate about things that I don't understand.

For me, evolution is kind of a toss up. I'm a big fan of "If it's not broke don't fix it" but there does have to be some small degree of forward progress/polishing. BG 2 is great, but I would expect a bit more in a remake (BG EE's additions weren't enough to justify the price to me for example). A lot of RPGs seem to be moving more towards adding Action elements (Kingdoms of Amalur, DA 2, Witcher) over the iso RTwP/TB RPGs of old and it's not an evolution I personally enjoy. I think this is publisher influence, more people interested in action, which makes it easier to recoup the investment & make profit. IMO, as the Mass Effect series went on you could see a heavier influence of action/shooting and it sometimes felt like the RPG side took a back seat. Most of the systems I enjoy are on KS instead of coming from publishers these days.

I agree that many KS projects seem really interesting, and I'm definitely going to check out the big RPGs - but if I can have the choice between evolution in game design or re-doing the same thing once more, I'll take evolution.

Note that I use the word "evolution" and not innovation. I have no interest in innovation by itself - as doing new things for the sake of new things is a bad way to evolve game design.

Evolution implies "better" - as in a better or more interesting way of doing something, and to me - that's always interesting.

Star Citizen is also a prime example of a project with a ton of financial backing compared to the normal KS game. When coupled with their obvious passion for the project, I think feature creep will be far less of an issue for them than other projects. With so much more money to work with than something like SR:R, I'd expect scope/evolution to be bigger/more ambitious.

It's true that they got a ton of cash - and for the kind of game they're going for, that's probably much needed.

But if you're going to make an RPG, for instance, you don't really need that kind of cash. I'm just not seeing a lot of evolution in the big KS projects - or maybe I haven't followed them closely enough.

Mostly, I worry about the short development cycles. I know that's about money - but a few people can pull off something great if they understand how to limit themselves. Basically, beyond paychecks and a place to work - you don't actually need much more than that.

Yes, the short dev cycles is also a concern to me. Not at all surprised to see WL 2 pushed back, I honestly wasn't expecting it before early 2014. I was really glad when Obsidian was talking about 2014 from the beginning with Project Eternity. I really think what hurt SR:R was the combination of the dev cycle and budget + team size. The biggest expenses in running a business is wages and overhead. When they jumped from 8 people to 30 they massively increased their wage bill (1.2m / 8 lasts a hell of a lot longer than 1.2/30) and had to get a new office, and more hardware I'm sure. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the 8 person team was targeting an 18 month dev cycle, and the 30 man team managed a 12 mo. one. I think they failed to hit the proper balance in dev time and costs.

Originally Posted by greywolf00
Yes, the short dev cycles is also a concern to me. Not at all surprised to see WL 2 pushed back, I honestly wasn't expecting it before early 2014. I was really glad when Obsidian was talking about 2014 from the beginning with Project Eternity. I really think what hurt SR:R was the combination of the dev cycle and budget + team size. The biggest expenses in running a business is wages and overhead. When they jumped from 8 people to 30 they massively increased their wage bill (1.2m / 8 lasts a hell of a lot longer than 1.2/30) and had to get a new office, and more hardware I'm sure. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the 8 person team was targeting an 18 month dev cycle, and the 30 man team managed a 12 mo. one. I think they failed to hit the proper balance in dev time and costs.

Yes, I also have to admit I have absolutely no idea what those 30 people were doing.

I mean, the engine is barebones and extremely non-interactive. The art assets are good - but I don't see how they'd require a massive team to pull off.

When you look at a game like Legend of Grimrock - with a small team of ~4 people or whatever, it's really odd to see 30 people on the Shadowrun team.

It doesn't exactly help that the engine is rather slow and inefficient to boot.

I didn't follow development - so maybe someone can explain what those 30 people were doing?

Obviously, they weren't coding a save system for a super simple data structure

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
…
When you look at a game like Legend of Grimrock - with a small team of ~4 people or whatever, it's really odd to see 30 people on the Shadowrun team.
…

That's rude, a first point is you contradict yourself when you highlight Grimrock, you was reproaching dev to be lazy or not enough hungry and reproduce the same models. But you highlight what's a deliberate and assumed but still a clone. I don't say Grimrock isn't great that's for me the best RPG release that year, but you was contradicting yourself.

The second point is comparing both is like comparing rocks and apples. Grimrock is about 1% of the size of SRR on many points, text and dialogs, graphics, diversity of environment, number of items. The classes and skills in Grimrock isn't more than 10% than what's in SRR. Now SRR has problably 1% of puzzles in Grimrock.

I mean Grimrock is a wonderful achievement but it's still a direct clone and not many RPG can use such low resource approach.

Originally Posted by greywolf00
Yes, the short dev cycles is also a concern to me. Not at all surprised to see WL 2 pushed back, I honestly wasn't expecting it before early 2014. I was really glad when Obsidian was talking about 2014 from the beginning with Project Eternity. I really think what hurt SR:R was the combination of the dev cycle and budget + team size. The biggest expenses in running a business is wages and overhead. When they jumped from 8 people to 30 they massively increased their wage bill (1.2m / 8 lasts a hell of a lot longer than 1.2/30) and had to get a new office, and more hardware I'm sure. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the 8 person team was targeting an 18 month dev cycle, and the 30 man team managed a 12 mo. one. I think they failed to hit the proper balance in dev time and costs.

It's clear that have more time and less people is more efficient in any way you look at it. The problem is if really the kickstarter could have been push back of one more year?

Obviously there's a problem to manage a kiskstarter that jump quite further than the initial sums planned.

That said you are all spitting on a game I feel very very attaching and it is growing. Ha well it's not a perfect game, but I doubt many KS will achieve as well, the save problem is important for whiners and for modders but it's a detail. The game is too short but not many CRPG has so few fillers and not many KS will sell that low on release, a game like TL2 is exceptional I'm not sure it will become the rules and anyway all big KS don't follow the model and use boxes and collector boxes in their model.

How many really played it before "spite" on it? It's not a major release but I won't exchange it against Skyrim.

Originally Posted by Ihaterpg
That said you are all spitting on a game I feel very very attaching and it is growing. Ha well it's not a perfect game, but I doubt many KS will achieve as well, the save problem is important for whiners and for modders but it's a detail. The game is too short but not many CRPG has so few fillers and not many KS will sell that low on release, a game like TL2 is exceptional I'm not sure it will become the rules and anyway all big KS don't follow the model and use boxes and collector boxes in their model.

How many really played it before "spite" on it? It's not a major release but I won't exchange it against Skyrim.

Not really spiting it. As I've said elsewhere, maybe not this thread, I did rather enjoy it and look forward to Berlin and more UGC. There are things about it that I feel could have been handled much better though. I played through the entire vanilla campaign, side quests and all, and messed around in the Life on a Limb UGC before posting any impressions on this site.

Originally Posted by Ihaterpg
That's rude, a first point is you contradict yourself when you highlight Grimrock, you was reproaching dev to be lazy or not enough hungry and reproduce the same models. But you highlight what's a deliberate and assumed but still a clone. I don't say Grimrock isn't great that's for me the best RPG release that year, but you was contradicting yourself.

What? Could we try English?

The second point is comparing both is like comparing rocks and apples. Grimrock is about 1% of the size of SRR on many points, text and dialogs, graphics, diversity of environment, number of items. The classes and skills in Grimrock isn't more than 10% than what's in SRR. Now SRR has problably 1% of puzzles in Grimrock.

I don't agree with that at all.

Shadowrun is a bunch of static maps with extremely limited interactivity - and a barebones combat system. There's more text in Shadowrun, sure, but I could write more text in a shorter time by myself.

I mean Grimrock is a wonderful achievement but it's still a direct clone and not many RPG can use such low resource approach.

Direct clone?

You mean to say you're not aware that Shadowrun Returns is trying to DIRECTLY emulate specific Shadowrun games from the past? That was one of the goals, actually.

Double Fine Adventure:
My first time ever on the KS website because of the amount of press and hype this project got. Ended up backing it in the last few hours just to be part of history.

Wasteland 2:
More my kind of game, though not knowing InXile very well and not having played the first Wasteland, a part of me backing it was to keep the ball rolling since rumors had it that Obsidian was looking into creating their own kickstarter project.
That being said, after having watched their 17 min pre-alpha gameplay video, this project has become number 1 for me at this point.

Project Eternity:
Definitely my most excited Kickstarter project when they launched it. Really wanted Obsidian to make one and happy that they did.

Torment: Tides of Numenera:
Was a bit hesitant on this one. I love PS:T but I feel like this might be the most difficult of the projects to turn out well. Just because so much is based on the writing and a weird setting which can be great but can also fail.
I am also worried if I, 15 years after PS:T came out, would still have as much fun on such a game as the younger me.